Heins said he disregarded advice he received from the industry when he came on board as the company's president and CEO.

"The industry was telling me to take BlackBerry services and put them on an Android platform or join the Windows 8 camp and put BlackBerry on that. They said it was the easy road and will go to market quickly that way.

"We thought hard about it but if you believe in what we believe in for the next 10 years, those platforms don't serve their purpose in the exciting journey towards mobile computing," he said.

Instead, he said that the team decided to build the BlackBerry 10 from scratch.

"There is not one line of software code in the BlackBerry 10 that has anything to do with the former BBOS platform -- huge undertaking but it was the right decision."

According to Heins, the company embarked on an intense study on its users and figured that BlackBerry people have very significant needs.

"We are in the maturing market and when we talk about smartphones, we have to know what our segment market is -- we have to know who our audience is. We cannot be everybody's darling, if we did, we will be swimming in a school of sharks," Heins said.

He mentioned that BlackBerry users are hyper connected and run more communication channels besides email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or BBM, than anybody else.

"BlackBerry people want on a smartphone what they have on a desktop or a PC, which is easily switching between applications without stopping or starting them. We also have to serve the purpose of being hyper connected. We took this to heart when we designed the platform," he claimed.

Heins also said the device was created for the BYOD segment, which is increasing within enterprises.

"We had to participate in this trend, and that's what the Z10 will do for us. Many people currently carry two devices -- one for work, one for their personal use. The Z10 merges these two together with a balance feature. We did not want a paradigm that other user interfaces have," he added.

Some of the BlackBerry Z10's features include: 1.5 Ghz dual core processors with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and an expandable memory card slot, a micro HDMI out port, NFC technology, and a removable battery.

In Australia, the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone will be available through retailers including Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Fone Zone, or can be purchased with competitive pricing plans from carrier partners Optus and Telstra from March 25 and 26, respectively.